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The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

flightfox.com

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Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#41

Post by laumac »

caseyf wrote: post #34

Is there going to be a way to create more flexible contests like this as a Flightfox user? Right now it looks like I can only do the same sorts of things that I can do on other travel sites (one way, round trip, multi city) I'd love to be able to put in something like me -> (any of these 10 destinations) or me + friend who lives elsewhere + friend who lives elsewhere -> (any of these 10 destinations)

At the moment you can put in whatever you want - we have with this contest - you can write a custom destination like "Anywhere in Europe" or "Round the World". There's a text box where you can put any requirements you like, you can even ask for help to use your 100k United miles etc. We've left it completely open to see how people use it and then build on that.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#42

Post by kapkapkap »

todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

Could you update that post with city names in addition to the airport codes? I think most of us could recognize ~2 of those at most.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#43

Post by ashbrahma »

laumac wrote: post #20
MattRogish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feature request: be able to see the fare some days after it's "expired", or pay the same bounty and see the fare, too.

Thanks Matt, it's definitely something we're discussing at the moment. Fares can disappear at anytime though.

Since fares can expire/disappear at anytime - do the experts still get to keep their commission if its gone by the time the contest creator decides to book it? Do experts have time caveats around their entries? Edit: Grammar

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#44

Post by todsul »

actuary wrote: post #22

My first thought upon clicking through was "Wow, a big crowd-sourced database of very cheap flights to random destinations. I think I know how I'm going to plan my next vacation!" But then: "Sorry, only the contest owner can view flight details." And there's nothing more for me to see here and I go back to what I was doing. Very cool concept otherwise, though.

Hi actuary,

Apologies for the confusion. Typically, a customer puts up a contest so our flight hackers can find them the best or cheapest flight.Often this contains a lot of personal information, as well as the secrets of our flight experts. Flightfox hinges on competitive advantage, so we keep the flight details private.

I've posted some of the flight details above, so you can at least see where the flight stops.

But be assured that if you put your own contest up, you can see everything. Also, we're constantly adding more and more flight information to help you make an informed decision.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#45

Post by todsul »

kapkapkap wrote: post #42
todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

Could you update that post with city names in addition to the airport codes? I think most of us could recognize ~2 of those at most.

Done, please see above.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#46

Post by ashbrahma »

todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

This looks like a combination of one-way and RT tickets. Do your experts give instructions on how these tickets can be booked relatively quickly?

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#47

Post by jerf »

kapkapkap wrote: post #42
todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

Could you update that post with city names in addition to the airport codes? I think most of us could recognize ~2 of those at most.

todsul beat me to it (good show!), but in the spirit of teaching a person to fish:

   for airport in JFK GEO TXL SXF AGA LGW LTN SAW IKA KUL PER BKK KBP; do
      curl "http://airportcode.riobard.com/airport/$airport?fmt=JSON";
      echo;
      sleep 1;
   done
Semicolons are present because I did this in one line, left so you can too. Linebreaks are for HN convenience only. echo is because curl doesn't add linefeeds, sleep 1 is to be polite.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#48

Post by laumac »

ashbrahma wrote: post #46
todsul wrote: post #40

Here are the winning flight details: This is a 6-Continent RTW itinerary for $1,730. We personally verified that it's a valid itinerary, and at the time of checking, all flights could be booked. JFK 18-Oct-2012 GEO 18-Oct-2012 Delta (New York, US to Georgetown, Guyana) GEO 25-Oct-2012 JFK 25-Oct-2012 Delta (Georgetown, Guyana to New York, US) JFK 14-Nov-2012 TXL 15-Nov-2012 Air Berlin (New York, US to Berlin, Germany…

This looks like a combination of one-way and RT tickets. Do your experts give instructions on how these tickets can be booked relatively quickly?

Yes, the experts give step-by-step instructions on how and where to book.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#49

Post by mseebach »

laumac wrote: post #10

For the cheapest route ($1,730), here are the cities visited: Depart New York - Georgetown (South Am) - New York (North Am) - Berlin (Europe) - Agadir (Africa) - London (Europe) - Turkey (Europe) - Tehran (Asia) - Kuala Lumpur (Asia) - Perth (Oceania) - Bangkok (Asia) - End New York

Geography nitpick: The airport in Istanbul is actually east of the Bosporus, making it Asia.

Re: The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents

#50

Post by todsul »

science_robot wrote: post #25

Why would you use a human flight expert instead of an algorithm?

Hi science_robot,

The entire premise of Flightfox is that humans beat machines. Of course, in some cases if you only consider price this is debatable, but in many more cases, humans really do win.

Why? Because there is a lot of flight data and there is a material cost to performing a search. If you want a 6-Continent RTW trip, a flight search engine can't run 1,000,000 queries just to find you the cheapest route. The data providers impose pretty tight limits. When you hit those limits in aggregate, you risk very high costs.

Apart from that, and most importantly, humans have a wealth of knowledge that simply isn't catalogued. That's because it's too broad, too often changing, too obscure, or the airlines don't want OTAs to use that info; e.g. award flight availability across all airlines.

Our challenge now is to expand into many of these non-price factors and offer value even for short trips where we can't beat airline advertised prices. But as you can imagine, in its current state, Flightfox really comes into its own for complicated flights, even if just slightly complex.

The posted contest really beats anything on the web by a large amount. 6 continents for $1730 is pretty remarkable, or at least we think. It's not us who found it, it's our experts, who are the fabric of Flightfox.

Hope that helps.

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